


Between Cowley and Cowboy

by LadyAJ_13



Series: Queen's Lane Coffee House [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s03e02 Arcadia, Getting Together, I suppose is not an inaccurate way of putting it, M/M, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 20:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: It is the night before Peter heads off to America, and he and Morse have unfinished business.





	Between Cowley and Cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> A few people asked for a sequel to 'Queens Lane Coffee House', and this will make more sense if you read that first! 
> 
> Dialogue at the beginning and end lifted directly from Arcadia.

“Leave all this behind. A new start.”

“Right.” Morse twitches his head to one side. “Ah, when you do you...?”

“End of the week.”

“That soon?”

He shrugs. “When your number's up. We're uh, we're having a few drinks at the Flag. Just mates.”

“Suppose I won’t be seeing you around then.”

It’s so goddamn similar that for a second Peter’s rewound to eight years ago, the scent of coffee and cake hanging in stuffy café air.

He thinks of Hope – his new start, stretching out into the future, a land of golden sun and wide-open plains and life on the range and love. He thinks of Morse – rain and inside out umbrellas, freckles, cheese and pickle sandwiches, confusion and hatred and just the beginning of a friendship, like their boat evening its keel.

He stares at Morse with wide eyes, until the bustle of the supermarket begins to seep back in. He doesn’t want to say no, not this time, so he says nothing at all. Just claps Morse on the arm and walks away.

\--

He fidgets, later. He and Morse had been shuffled out of the station by Thursday – long days mean paperwork can be delegated, Morse – and sent home for a meal and some rest. They live in opposite directions now, and had parted at the gates without ceremony.

God, what a week. He still shakes when he thinks of that bang, thrown forward, the tunnel filling up with dust and choking in his throat. He’d put a good face on it when he’d found his feet and stumbled out – seen that look on Morse’s face and chose the jokey angle in a heartbeat – but it keeps playing over and over. He could have died. Who chooses a job where they might die any day?

Well, he did. Thought it was worth it, back then, for a chance to do something proper. And Morse does, without question. But the two of them – both loners – maybe that makes the risk easier. Only he’s not a loner now, he has Hope, and more than that he has a kid on the way and he can’t risk leaving him. Or her. It’s definitely time to call coppering a day.

It cycles through his brain again, the bang and brute force off his feet, and tries wetting his throat with a gulp of tea. It does nothing against the dry, scratchy, dust-thick air that’s entirely in his memory and making it hard to breathe. He sees the air clearing, lightening as the tunnel ends and then there’s daylight, and Morse. Saving some idiot of a girl who never needed saving. He thought he’d been a hero. They’d been tricked. And that other girl, flicking the switch with him still in the –

He rewinds. He’d saved the girl. And Morse. Who'd called him Peter for the first time in years, who'd looked at him like his world was ending and starting again, just because Peter had stepped into daylight.

Who echoes words almost a decade buried, in a supermarket or sprawled in grass streaked with bomb dirt, bringing _this_ up again.

He’s leaving tomorrow. For good, the other side of the damn world. It’s a day off for both of them. He’s having leaving drinks, but Morse is a contrary fucker, chances are he won’t show. And they just walked away from each other at the station gates.

He grabs his keys.

\--

The door opens and Morse looks singularly unsurprised to see him. He stands back silently, strains of opera in the air, and Peter pushes past him into the room. He pours himself a measure of whiskey from the bottle on the table and chokes a mouthful down, not sure what to say.

_Why now_, he wants to scream. Why bring it up, why not let him go with it all still buried, why not say something earlier, why not let them have time? _Why now?_

But he understands. God does he understand, not wanting to roll the dice until there’s just two losing options, because then you know what you’re gonna get and you know how to plan for it.

Last time he made a choice and it gave them this. He’d wondered, of course he had, what might have happened if he’d gone the other way and followed Morse home that afternoon. Morse might never have become a copper, and on his generous days he can admit that Oxford would have been poorer for it. Or maybe Morse being a policeman is a fixed point that the world bends towards – and then how would that have played out? Whether one or the other of them would have left Oxford, or if they’d have muddled along, for better or worse, as partners still. A whole different undercurrent. Whether that would have been their downfall, or their making. Whether he’d still be heading to America, a dad, a soon-to-be husband.

Probably not.

He finishes the glass and put it down on the table with a crack. Morse raises an eyebrow, but just refills it with amber liquid. When Peter shakes his head, he picks it up himself and knocks it back in a too-smooth practiced swallow.

“Tomorrow,” murmurs Morse, turning the empty glass in his hands. Peter stuffs his hands deep in his pockets. It’s no time at all. Less than twenty-four hours and he’ll be on a bus with all this behind him. “Why was I the last person you told?”

“You know why.”

Morse nods. He looks so blank. Peter wasn’t expecting either tears or jubilation, but to even out to nothing…

He remembers Morse’s smile in the supermarket, affection tempered by shock and hurt in his eyes. Peter had been happy. Nervous, at saying it, picking the worst possible time, but happy all the same, his head full of cowboy films and a little boy (or girl) with his hair. Right up until that bloody sentence that brought the past screeching in to the present.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, but he knows it’s weak. He’s sorry for how he did it, but not the decision. He _needs_ to get away. He can’t deal with it any more. He wonders if he’d picked somewhere else – up north perhaps, a new posting rather than a new wife – whether Morse might have followed him. Or if Oxford is just too carved into his bones to leave.

Morse shrugs. “I understand,” he says with a small smile, and its _genuine_. Like he’s decided that what matters is what matters to Peter, and Peter’s not so sure if the situations were reversed that he’d be so good. But that’s Morse all over really, taking the bag drop job, trying to send Peter ahead out of the tunnel, like his own life has no worth. Peter reaches out, tentatively, and lets one hand settle on Morse’s shoulder. It’s like a dam breaks, that simple touch, and Morse steps forward until they’re clutching at each other, Peter pulling Morse’s shirt into tight handfuls, knuckles digging into his back in a strange mockery of violence.

They’ve never hugged before.

It’s not what men do. Hugging is for children and women. Or, maybe – rare, extenuating circumstances like brushes with death. Mind you, he is leaving. It’s a kind of death. Morse’s chin is sharp where it digs into his shoulder, and for the first time in too long he breathes air that smells of washing detergent and whiskey rather than dust.

“I'm sorry,” he chokes out again, for lack of anything better to say.

Morse's hands reach up, cradling his head. “Are you here for this?” he asks plainly. In the end, its the easiest thing in the world to nod, and dip, just slightly, catching lips with lips.

“Morse,” he murmurs, when they break apart, but the other man just reaches for Peter's tie, pulling it apart and starting on his shirt buttons. It's hurried, like he thinks Peter is a second from pulling away, and so he runs a thumb along Morse's lip. “Slow down.” Morse looks up at him with those big blue eyes, his mouth opening slightly in shock. “We've got time.”

It's a lie, of course. If there's one thing they don't have, its time. Mere hours to play out anything they can, anything they want, to feast and glut themselves in a way that will last for a lifetime.

That's impossible. But it doesn't have to be over and done.

He runs his hands up Morse's back in a long, slow sweep. How many times has he watched this back, both metaphorically and literally? Morse is light on friends, and he can't help but feel he's leaving it unprotected, despite Thursday, despite Strange. He strokes, as if his hands can impart some kind of protection, lingering under the skin until needed, to deflect blades and bullets and blame – or whatever Morse unfairly attracts next.

“Peter,” Morse says. “There's slow and then there's glacial. Kiss me.”

It breaks the ice; he grins, kissing Morse again and again until he feels quite dizzy with it. After that, its nothing to peel away his shirt, back him onto the bed and satisfy a long-held curiosity about how far down those freckles go. He kisses them lightly, round his shoulders and down his chest, then presses his fingertips to them. “I noticed these back then.”

Morse doesn't seem to need clarification, just smiles down at Peter. He twines his hands in Peter's hair, and no doubt its slick with pomade, but he manages a good grip, dragging him back up. “I noticed this.” He frees one hand, running it down Peter's back until it rests lightly on his arse. “And this.”

“Oh really? I thought I caught you staring at me clearing tables.”

“No, couldn't have.” He squeezes, and Peter breathes sharply. “I was very subtle.”

“You're subtle as an opera singer.” Morse smiles again at that, bright and happy in a way that Peter has to taste.

“Did I look at the precinct?”

“No.”

“See. Subtle.” Morse steals a kiss, before darting off to the side, sucking half-bites along his jaw until he bites at an earlobe, and Peter keens. He hadn't known that was a thing. “I was looking,” Morse whispers.

“Me too,” he gasps, rolling them until Morse is on top, because he seems like he knows what he's doing, or what he wants at least, and all Peter can think to want is Morse around him, covering him. He holds him close, arms locked and legs intertwined.

“Really?”

“Yeah Morse, you're-” and even now he can't quite think how to say it. He's scared it will come out horribly mushy, but then he's leaving tomorrow, isn't he? There are no consequences. “You're beautiful,” he breathes. “Everyone knows it.” Morse blushes, and Peter can't help but kiss him again, before he has to pull away just to look – because he loves that skin flushed pink. He flashes back to radiators turned up too high and hair curling with sweat. He'll see that again tonight, he vows.

He tilts his hips, eyes wide on Morse's as the other man realises and tilts his in return. It's good, and they build a rhythm that has them both breathing hard in no time.

“Morse, Morse,” Peter pants. “Okay, speed up again, go back to-” He doesn't have to finish the thought, Morse going for his buttons immediately. And how ridiculous is it that he's still fully clothed, and Morse only half undressed? They roll to the side and shuffle out of their trousers, shirts and underwear discarded like confetti onto the floor.

Peter stares at Morse as they still, both heads on Morse's pillow. It smells, faintly, of him. No fag smoke or hair pomade here, just sheets that have been used for a few days and allowed to settle in. It's comforting; a smell he hadn't even realised he knew. “What do you want?” Peter asks.

“Everything.”

-

Afterwards they lie together, limbs knocking and hair tickling noses, and as they grow cool Morse draws the cover up.

“Well.” He doesn't know what to say again, but he'd like a smoke about now. What do you say to a one-time lover, sort-of friend, long-time colleague and ghost from your past, when its over? There's too much.

“Mmm.”

“Thank you.”

A small huff of breath, from Morse.

“If I wasn't-”

“You are.” There's no accusation in Morse's tone, just a strange sense of finality. Peter remembers Hope, a vague sense of guilt descending and adding to the deflating of the moment. She hadn't even crossed his mind since that first touch. He should go. To lie here, arms encircling Morse, his head on Peter's collarbone – it seems too much like a promise he's not free to make.

He shifts, sitting up, and pretends he doesn't feel the slight dampness on his shoulder, or see the redness around Morse's eyes. It's grown dark, anyway, and he has to scrabble for his clothes – he could be mistaken.

“You can stay if you want.”

Morse isn't looking at him, gaze fixed instead on the darkened window. Peter fiddles with his belt buckle, running his thumb over the metal. He'd like to, God would he like to, but he has a new life starting tomorrow. If he stays now, would he ever get up again? “Better not.”

“Right.”

Morse looks at him and smiles. It would pass, for most people.

“Remember. The Flag, tomorrow.”

Morse nods, and Peter lets himself out.

\--

He plasters a smile on his face – he’s happy, really, it’s just a lot – and accepts handshakes for the medal, and the odd shoulder clap. A medal. Just as he’s leaving, with no opportunity to lord it over Morse at all. Hope is impressed though, smile bright and laughing with some of the WPCs like they’re all firm friends. Maybe, if they’d stayed, she’d have fitted in here with his crowd.

His stomach sinks that Morse hasn’t shown up, even though he didn’t expect it and it’s probably for the best. He can’t imagine saying their final goodbyes here, in front of everyone. He can’t imagine Morse buying him a pint, shaking his hand, both of them flashing back to the night before when those hands grasped in a different way, or him greeting Hope like they hadn’t written her out of existence for a few short hours, bodies wrapped together in the darkness.

A flash of movement out the window catches his eye. It could be anyone. He runs outside, and catches Morse walking away.

“Morse! Are you not coming in?”

He turns and faces Peter. “You know. Work.”

“Right.” They both know there is no work, case wrapped, reports either delegated or already filed. “Well. I suppose...?” He holds out his hand; no other option here, in the middle of town, overlooked by a pub full of coppers. But now that Morse is in front of him he can't let him go with just a smile, or even a kind word. He needs touch. One last time.

Morse walks over and clasps it tightly. Peter wonders whether he's feeling the same warmth, more than just body heat, but the kind of warmth that comes from a shared history. He tries to memorise his face; smiling, although it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

“Your other half. I'm sorry, I don't know her name.”

Part of him wants to leave Hope out of this, no place for her between them with Morse's hand still clasped in his. But that's not fair to her, and selfishly he wants Morse to know. A name to think, if he ever remembers him, once Peter's gone.

“Hope.”

Morse pulls his hand back, and Peter finds himself tucking his away into his pockets, trying to recapture that warmth.

“Make a go of it.”

Like we never could, is the undercurrent Peter might just be imagining. Strange interrupts, though, and by the time Peter turns around again there's just Morse's back, disappearing down the road.

Stilted and somewhat awkward, he thinks later, one arm around Hope and the other clutching a pint glass a shade too tightly. In a way that was how it should be; their relationship in a nutshell. From that first day to now they’ve always been slightly out of step with each other, except for last night; one single time when the cogs aligned. And maybe that means this was all for the best – a last minute gamble that paid off but never had to stand up to real life. To the scrutiny, the worry, the dull grind of the day to day. Just one night that can live on in memory.

Now they know.


End file.
